WEBVTT

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OK.

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Now, it's back to
a few prose poems,

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a long one right now called
We Never Choose Our Fathers.

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It's really about father
figures and how they choose us

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and in some ways we
choose them, but it's not

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about my own father really
although who knows what's

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at the origin of these things.

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We never choose our fathers

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On a good day his
curve-balls loops more inches

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than he needs to fool your bad

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Nervous, you dig in force
yourself to face him

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He's bent over examining the law
he slipped through your lower

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lip

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You pronounce his name
silently at breakfast,

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washing it down with each
spoonful of cold cereal?

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Fat, your liver refuses to
break down, it coats every bite

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The protein caged until
you are dense with it

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Hunched over the
toilet, straining

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He's the boy you sat next
to at boarding school,

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whose blue bulged
with the right answers

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Senior year you elected him,
the long haired valedictorian

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Notice how he looks
at you his eyes fixed

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Just last of your nose,
expressionless as rubber balls

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A few summers ago he
took a room in your head

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He's in there now
writing your poems

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Each time they look a
little more like his

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When he scribbles
something on a postcard

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That last year the
winter, the stamp

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rained bled to the
fineness of a watercolor

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You read over his
words your hunger

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driving you back
over each stroke

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until you are
almost in his mouth

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The dark oval
repeating and repeating

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like a string of zeros
and a bank statement

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Strange that you
should feel so empty

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The sky out your bedroom
window blank in bed

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leaning back on one elbow

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You try to imagine how God
looked the day before you

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were conceived

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